


Nightmare Made Flesh

by avearia



Category: Silent Hill (Video Game Series)
Genre: Gen, Harry has issues - but can you blame him?, Nightmares, PTSD, Post-Silent Hill, Pre-Silent Hill 3, Toddler Heather
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-17 06:49:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21262577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avearia/pseuds/avearia
Summary: Harry Mason knows what a nightmare looks like.
Relationships: Cheryl Mason & Harry Mason, Harry Mason & Heather Mason
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Nightmare Made Flesh

Nightmare Made Flesh

—

Harry Mason knows what a nightmare looks like.

That town was crawling with them. Deformed creatures of ripped and rotten flesh, lurching through the shadows. He remembers the distorted doctors and nurses that plagued Alchemilla, bloodied by violence and pulsing with disease. The little shadow-nothings that haunted the school grounds—and their twins, the horror children that ravaged anything unlike themselves on sight. He beat down countless hoards of them, desperately searching for his daughter.

He can't stand dogs now. Even their bark has him reaching for the pistol he abandoned after his escape, or leaves his hands grasping for the nearest stick to bludgeon with. He hates birds, and bats, too—the sound of wingbeats in the dark sends his pulse racing. And sirens make him shrivel in his skin.

But the nightmares aren't only inhuman.

He sees nightmares in the greedy gaze of the next door neighbor; it reminds him of a doctor he once knew. He hears it in the righteous judgment of a religious zealot preaching on the street. He suspects that Holy Man would burn his child in exchange for paradise, too.

Sometimes the nightmares aren't anything at all—just his reflection in the window, downing his third cup of coffee at 3 am as he stares out the sliding glass door. It's pitch black outside. Are his eyes deceiving him? Is he really only steps away from the empty void of Nowhere?

Then his breath fogs up the glass, and it brings him back home.

Cheryl—_Heather_ totters down the steps, blanket in her fist trailing behind. Her tiny three-year-old face has a pinched, haunted look that makes him turn.

"What are you doing up?" Harry asks. She clings to his leg.

He sets his empty mug aside and puts a hand on her head. "...Bad dreams?" he guesses, and she nods.

A pause, then, "Go upstairs." Harry folds the glasses he's earned in his old age and pockets them. "I'll be up in a moment to read you a story."

She lingers. Her eyes stray to the glass and track something out in the darkness. It takes another pat on her shoulder for her to stir and do as she's told. Her hair, freshly dyed, bounces stiffly as she climbs the stairs to her room.

Harry watches her go. He turns back to the window and, again, sees nothing but his own reflection trapped in a realm of shadow.

Since bringing her home, Heather has had countless nightmares. It's odd, because Cheryl never had any. It's something Harry has never had to deal with before. Cheryl was always quiet, polite, even tempered, but now—Yes, he can still see the familiar mannerisms, the way she sucks on her first knuckle when scared, the way she drags that ragged blanket around, but Heather, three years old, carries something haunted in her eyes.

Harry Mason knows what a nightmare looks like.

That is not his daughter.

**Author's Note:**

> I always thought that Harry Mason's greatest fear—greater than twisted cults, winged beasts, or even Eldritch Gods—Harry Mason's greatest fear would be the creeping realization that the little girl he fought tooth and nail to rescue was, in fact, not quite his daughter at all.


End file.
